E. Coli may offer cheap way to create a Malaria vaccine

Researchers have found a way to use E. coli bacteria to inexpensively manufacture a once hard-to-produce protein that is critical to the development of a malaria vaccine. Nirbhay Kumar, professor and chair of tropical medicine at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, worked with Evelina Angov of the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research to use the common bacteria to create a new process to purify and refold protein CHrPfs25. When tested as a vaccine, the protein produced a 100 percent effective malaria transmission-blocking antibody response in mice using the two most common species of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Malaria, which kills nearly 800,000 people every year worldwide, is caused by a microscopic parasite that alternates between human and mosquito hosts at various stages of its lifecycle. As reported in the journal Infection and Immunity, Kumar’s vaccine is designed to trigger an immune response in people so they produce antibodies that target a...